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The Mac version at least, of FilterForge -- or as I call it, "Filter Forge Quit [un]expectedly.app" is the flakiest tool I think I have ever run. 9 times out of 10, at the end of a render (even a preview render) it'll crash to desktop, and getting any kind of result out of it is a real exercise in frustration (worse even that trying to make Carrara do curtains!)
http://www.nvidia.com/object/melody_home.html
may work for you too
crashes for me
Thanks, Rampart & Dartanbeck for your comments earlier.
Since my prevous posts I opened up 3d Coat (Educational version) a couple of times and, as always when I do that, I realized again what a powerful program it is.
Somehow, though, I don't find it intuitive to get in to. I found Sculptris very easy to start working with and thought 3d Coat would be much the same but I think a lot more judgement needs to be applied to every action when sculpting in 3d Coat (to get the brush size correct for what needs to be done, which brush to use, etc.) There is much more than sculpting, though, it has a real professional feel to it.
The program is superb but I have a long way to go before I will get to grips with its features. I bought some tutorials from the DAZ store and looked through many of them again the other day. Previously I found them interesting to watch but felt just as perplexed by the program afterwards as I did before. The tutorials are from a previous version, for one thing. However, this time round I got a lot more out of them, probably because the program is now far less strange to me than it was before.
Do I regret buying 3dCoat? No, I think it's going to feature large in what I may do in the future. Do I regret buying the tutorials? No, I will use them a few times over and even try to copy what was shown in them. However, it has to be said that there seems to be no shortage of free tutorial videos and speed demos on the internet.
Regarding the whole issue of learning new things, I'm a hobbyist and am prepared to stick with what I've bought and used so far. The programs which are 'core' to me are Carrara, Hexagon and lately Poser. Bryce is important also. Any animation I do with that combination will probably be with early DAZ figures. I don't have a huge library of content from the days when those figures were current but the possibility of the Poser clothing and hair plugin discussed elsewhere could propel these figures right to the forefront for animation in Carrara.
My other 'strand' of software which I use is Iclone. I can feed in DAZ Genesis, Carrara-built FBX files and Hexagon models. As I've mentioned here and there on the forums, I'm not sure which strand I would opt for if I was one day to settle down to really getting a story animated! The main staging program would either be Carrara or Iclone. In the iclone world, improved motion capture solutions are coming onto the scene. I'm not sure where Carrara or Poser stand in this regard. The nice thing is that, when working up to a project, both Carrara and Iclone can be used while assets and ideas are being developed. Quick, 'prototype' scenes can be assembled in Iclone. Key-framed animations in Carrara can be exported as FBX files. Such files are 'good to go' in both Iclone and Carrara.
EDITED for typos
This is an interesting thread, since everything said here are things that have been on my mind.
Last year it was 9 years ago I did anything in 3D. I tried to jumpstart myself by purchasing Carrara 8.5 and the latest Poser. The jumpstart didn’t work, and recently I have tried it again by purchasing the latest Poser, again. The last year I have realized that I had to learn a lot again, or everything all over again. New to the scene for me is the use of normal maps. I have also looked into getting into a new work flow. Sad to see, is my understanding that Carrara moves very slowly forward. That made look into Vue, and that applications seems to meet my personal demands on my type of scenery building, but I need some good modeler and texture abilities on the side too.
I have looked into Zbrush, Mudbox, 3D Coat and also Silo 3d. Excluding Zbrush totally because of it’s price tag, I have compared a Mudbox sub license up against 3D Coat. I do not like subscription and I have the chance to own 3D Coat on regular license. Mudbox seems easier to use, yet powerfull - and 3D Coat harder to learn and also powerful, but in between my budget.
I looked more into 3D Coat, but I found it to be so tedious to learn. First, I looked into the manual, which is not a reference manual to my liking. The video tutorials I find might cover everything I need to know, but I feel a lot of them require more personal preferences then I posses. I am moving very slowly forward with this application. The lack of good documentation gets me on and off.
But then I saw Silo 3D, which is something that feels more similar to what I was used too. This application feels like a mix of Hexagon, UV mapper pro (but much better) and Sculptris. Though it lacks all the sculpt brushes that Zbrush, Mudbox and 3D Coat have, it could probably meet my demands for modeling with what it contain.
The next thing from here would be the 3D painting feature. As discussed here, Filter Forge, Substance Painter/Designer seemingly good alternative. I would like to get hold of the best choice also. Filter Forge I bought and find the huge library of presets very interesting. I have experienced the bug using it as plug in Photoshop, but not as a stand alone. I have only used the presets from the library, not made anyone for my self.
I have also looked into Quixel Suite containing NDO painter, DDO painter and 3D Baker. Between Substance and Quixel, I wonder about which one would be the easiest application to learn. Quixel works as plug in for PS, but that is okay by me. Anyone with experience with the latter up against Substence?
@snekkis - looks like you are writing a spec for Blender:)
Bear in mind that when exporting a .car scene from Hexagon, it is always written as a small scene. Not saying this is good or bad...it just is.
I have had filter forge for a while... used it recently, it's ve eeee ry slow :)
Nvidia has a free normal map plug in for photoshop https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop
included in the linked bundle , works wth pse too
Photoshop CC can do normal maps right of the Filters menu. They're a bit blocky though, so it's best to scale up your image first, then scale it back down afterwards to smooth it out.
If we are just talking about creating a normal map off an image I often use this site: http://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/ to do it for free. Not as good as baking it from geometryor painting it in a program like Sculptris, but for fairly subtle effects it works really well just to get a quick normal map for a texture.
Snekkis,
Regarding Silo, there is an old thread in The Commons which runs to four pages and has been 'resurrected' in the past couple of days.
I bought Silo cheap last year in a deal. It's my insurance for any time in the future when I can't use Hexagon. I believe it to be a very good modeller and it has other features as you mentioned. I really haven't used it, though, simply because Hexagon works for me. Here's the thread which began at a time when Silo was on a cheap offer and before it became 64-bit:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/34967/silo-2-for-40-worthwhile/p1
3d-coat is now on sale. You could buy the pro version for $279. Or the educational version for $79. And maybe afterwards upgrade from edu to prof for $180, so you pay $260...
Or check out SketchFab before December 24, and get Substance Painter Indie for $99 !
Indie is $149, are they gonna have some kind of sale we do not know about ?
At checkout use code: SKETCHFABXMAS